mrontemp: Porpoise Song

Why not?

I've only seen the Monkees' movie "Head" once, and I'm not even sure if I saw the whole thing, but this song beautifully set the scene for everything that followed. This ain't your typical Goffin/King song, at least in the instrumentation. Not that Rickey Wright was completely won over by Goffin/King's motives:

"Porpoise Song" [is] a lyrically incomprehensible Goffin/King stab at psychedelia that's at once a crass cash-in and one of the loveliest, most fragile sounds to emerge from the American hippie dream.

But I'm more impressed with Rickey Wright's grasp on reality than that of T Logan:

The porpoise song is a complete copy of the beatles. The monkeys should have been fined heavily and the record banned(porpoise even rhymes with walrus!). Grow up and realize the monkees were just a made up band by a TV show.
-- T Logan, Tuesday, 26 March 2002 01:00

Lessee, where do we begin with this one? Let's start with the origins of Lennon's song:

According to Pete Shotton, the final catalyst was a letter received form a pupil of Quarry Bank School, which mentioned that an English master was getting his class to analyze Beatles' songs. The letter from the Quarry Bank pupil was sent to John by Stephen Bayley who received an answer dated September 1, 1967 (which was sold at auction by Christie's of London in 1992). This amused John, who decided to confuse such people with a song full of the most perplexing and incoherent clues. He asked Shotton to remind him of a silly playground rhyme which English schoolchildren at the time delighted in. John wrote it down: 'Yellow matter custard, green slop pie, All mixed together with a dead dog's eye, Slap it on a butty, ten foot thick, Then wash it all down with a cup of cold sick'.

Doesn't really relate to this, does it?

My, my the clock in the sky is pounding away
There's so much to say
A face, a voice, an overdub has no choice
And it cannot rejoice

Wanting to be, to hear and to see
Crying to the sky

But the porpoise is laughing good-bye, good-bye
good-bye, good-bye, good-bye

Clicks, clacks
Riding the backs of giraffes for laughs is alright for a while
The ego sings of castles and kings and things
That go with a life of style

Wanting to feel, to know what is real
Living is a lie

But the porpoise is waiting good-bye, good-bye
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye